


Saudade

by Waterdipity



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Autism, Autistic House, I'm on a god given mission to find an autistic old man in every game i play, Other, yeah thats right you heard me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 09:54:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27848882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waterdipity/pseuds/Waterdipity
Summary: Water freezes under cold, melts under heat. He hasn't changed, he's simply changed forms.
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**_Autism_ ; ** **a developmental disorder of variable severity that is characterized by difficulty in social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behavior.**

He’d known he had it for a very, very long time before his pseudo-cryogenic sleep. His parents had been devastated, lamenting to a relationship counselor how they’d feared this would happen to their dear boy, how his mother had admitted she’d thought of driving their Volkswagen off the side of a bridge hoping it would kill her and himself in the process. As a child, he’d been blissfully unaware of his disorder, only knowing he went to slightly different classes at different times of day than his other classmates. When he was a pre-teen, he’d taken to liking technology and robotics, to the point it had become something of an obsession. When he was in high school, he was told the name and severity of his mental handicap, but at the time he didn’t truly grasp how ‘other’ that made him to his peers. His obsession morphed into his profession of choice during MIT, and in his early twenties that is when he began to really notice. Or rather, when other people began to notice.

In elementary and even the brutality of high school, it was a relatively easy thing to hide. “But you don’t look… you know. Messed up, Robbie, you seem normal!” He clenched at his jaw at those statements, having to swallow down any offense he took and hope his intense practice of social interactions wouldn’t make him come off as unsavory to a bunch of brutes. He would usually just try to smile and nod, smile and nod, hoping it was good enough to redirect any insults hurled his way. The teacher’s around him treated him fairly, but he chalked that up to government policy and sympathy rather than genuine caring.

But, adulthood was harder. Vastly so.

He ran a business, a big business, and that meant a certain heir of professionalism. He wasn’t un-professional exactly, he knew where to be and how to look, etc. It was the people he fumbled like a moron with. His childhood and teen years had been heavily sheltered by his orphanage, they didn’t want him cavorting with just anyone, and most of his acquaintances didn’t meet their standards. Therefore he’d had little social interaction that wasn’t riddled with either pity, or mockery for his condition. But in adulthood, he couldn’t be sheltered, he didn’t want to be. This resulted in a lot of awkward interactions, unsurprisingly.

Electronics he understood, circuitry he understood. Business, he intimately understood. But there were many times where he was at a high-class event, or a trust fund, or a fancy cocktail party he’d been formally invited to, and he would find it impossible to know exactly how he was supposed to act. Because again, he wasn’t unprofessional. He wasn’t a heathen. But he couldn’t control certain things, and that frustrated him to absolutely no end.

At one of those fancy parties, a lot of powerful people had been in attendance. Rich, powerful people he could stand to benefit if he made friends with. In tandem with this, it happened to be a rather quiet room he was in. He hadn’t been sure why it was so quiet, all of everyone’s chatter had sort of melded in his eardrums to the point it all ended up sounding rather quiet. He sorted his way through the small conversations, words he didn’t care about floating past, until he had made it to the other side of the room.

Now, at the time, he’d wanted to bring up business ventures, perhaps convincing the men he’d assimilated into conversation with to invest, but then something entirely unexpected had happened. The group of well-dressed men, all with their hair combed back and slicked with hair gel not unlike himself, had brought up the topic of the ocean. Specifically, someone mentioned Orcas, and SeaWorld. Up until this pinpoint moment in the conversation, he was barely listening. Honestly, he was waiting for a lull in the chatter to bring up Robco and how it would benefit them, etc. But the second that was mentioned, his brain seemed to perk up like a dog offered a treat, and his eyes went from being fascinated with the pink and orange floor tiles, to making semi-decent eye contact with the one who’d mentioned Orcas. 

“You like Orca whales?” He’d inquired, his voice almost cracking. The man, taller than him (regrettably and embarrassingly, many of the men were taller than him) had nodded, though he didn’t seem nearly as interested as himself. “Well, you know, SeaWorld is pretty bad for them. They’re essentially just as emotional as a human being, and keeping them trapped in a small confined space like Seaworld does is completely detrimental to them. They’re placed in those small spaces of water with mixtures of whales from all over the planet, so not only are they massively confined, but they’re not even permitted to be with their own kin. It’s all very sad really-” and then he halted mid-stream.

His voice, he realized, had been too loud. Not yelling exactly, but it was teetering on that level of volume. It was to the point where the people in other entirely separate conversations around him began to turn their heads and look at him, casting annoyed glares at his disruptiveness. Not only that, but the men he’d surrounded himself with had also begun to stare, mostly out of irritation at his loudness compared to the relative silence of the rest of the room, but also because his tangent had been completely uninvited and uncalled for. He recognized those looks, it was the same ones he was given when he used to ramble about his old childish interests in elementary school, when an instructor discussing a subject he didn’t care about would be agitated and give him a rather stern look of ‘stop talking.’

He felt himself sweating. Not because it was hot in the room, but because his face had gained much more color, the inside of his suit, which he already hated the texture and tightness of, suddenly getting far too cramped for his own liking. His brain felt like a train that was full steam ahead until, and instead of slowly but surely slowing it down, he’d forced it to a screeching halt. The businessmen had resumed whatever they were previously discussing, making it clear they wanted nothing to do with him. His stomach ached with the need to leave. He didn’t even care about what he came all the way to this side of the massive casino to speak about, the only thing he was set on was exiting as soon as possible.

Nowadays, over 200 years in the future being nowadays, he didn’t suffer these situations. He’d effectively cut himself off, which it meant he was isolated, but that had massive advantages in his electronic eyes. No one to irritate him, no one to bother him, no more of those horribly awkward conversations where he made a giant joke of himself. He could keep an eye on the strip through Benny or his many securitrons, or Victor, or even Jane if it was that dire. There was no logical need to be anything other than what he was now. No one knew about his condition, he’d effectively erased it from all medical records so no one could trace it back to him. No one knew about the husk hidden away in his basement either, but that was far more manageable because it was grounded in the physical. Information however, was difficult to keep track of and out of other people’s grasp.

Unfortunately, being entirely stationary on the giant monitor also had it’s disadvantages. For one- again, totally stationary. Not that he necessarily had a giant logical reason to get up, move around, walk around the silent dustiness of the 38, wear the different clothes he’d stored away when he was alone and didn’t require a strict public image to upkeep. No, there was no inherent reason for this desire, if anything the prospect was a completely fruitless and even detrimental venture. If he went outside, what if people recognized his face, one of his enemies could wind up and assassinate him, he could catch a disease, get radiation poisoning, any of the above was an awful consequence for a mere creature comfort. No, the idea of a body-double was preposterous. He would surely perish.

His forever frozen face flickered on the giant screen. He did… miss… certain things. Certain things his securitrons and their bodies just couldn’t simulate, things only a human and the human brain could process in the way he was familiar with. He missed touch.

Snow, glass, cold metal, flower petals, soft silicon. He could name a thousand things he missed the ability to feel physically. He both celebrated and mourned himself when he put himself in the tube in the basement, it was a huge success. He’d extended his life far beyond a human’s, he’d cheated God. But he knew he would never be the same, and maybe that would be better than how he was. However… it still hurt.

But as much as he missed his ability to feel, he also held a tumultuous relationship with such a basic human sense.

In the orphanage he’d grown up in, they hadn’t been kind about his mental handicap. When he acted normal, they treated him fine. They pretended like they cared whenever he resembled the other children. And a few of the caretakers genuinely did seem to care, young women who’d recently been hired, but the older ones? Some of the younger ones? They saw him as a brat, they didn’t take his disability seriously. “High- functioning” essentially meant “doesn’t actually exist” to them. It got to the point where, if he started flapping his hands when they tingled and itched to expel energy, a pillowcase or in the worst case scenario duct tape, would be tightly bound around his hands, making it impossible for them to move. It only got worse once they decided to do that, it spiraled into him having a breakdown, his hands tied up together rendering him clumsy and useless, so he couldn’t even hold himself as he broke down. He would sob, his whole body shaking and trembling, then wavy hair tangled. Sometimes, they would yell at him as he had an episode in his small bed, calling him a quitter, an over dramatic ingrate compared to what the other kids had come from.

The unpleasant, sour memory, of that tiny sweaty little boy unable to even use his hands as he had a meltdown in his bed, made the image of him stutter on the screen. 

They were terrible thoughts, poisonous ones. They didn’t just impede his mind from progress, they actively halted it. But what may have bothered him more than that memory, or any memory akin to it, was that it in all likelihood could happen again. But this time, instead of at least being in a human body he knew was capable of handling such a scenario, he was partially digital. What was worse- he couldn’t totally predict what could set him off. It could be anything. He didn’t really know how it could affect his senses, being in the massive computer. It frightened him.

He had the hum of his securitrons, and the comfort of Jane, to keep him company and busy from those thoughts at least.


	2. Chapter 2

Out of all the places she had been in her short life, the Strip may have held the most chaotic and crowded atmosphere.

The music crooned from unseen speakers, the lights above nothing short of dazzling. Drunks and gamblers meandered about the pavement, stumbling around with beer bottles clasped in their fists. One NCR soldier was puking his guts out against the wall of Gomorrah just behind a dark-skinned dancing girl. While this happened, more soldiers poured into Gomorrah’s front doors, eager to be in the same position as their comrade, only in front of a toilet in private and not a wall out in the open. Just across with the utter chaos was the Lucky 38, tall and shining and noticeably much cleaner than that of anywhere else on the Strip.

‘Benny Gecko, The Tops, Benny Gecko, The Tops-’ she repeated to herself, scanning the signs ahead for that specific casino. Just beyond the gate, she could see the ridiculous sign for The Tops, just as flashy as it had sounded. The gate made a horrible noise as she slid it open, like running your hands along chain-link fencing but louder and more grating. 

Her leg, her good one that is, made the first step into this separate section of the Strip, followed by the curved prosthesis that replaced her left leg. The rubber sole of her fake leg made traction against the level road, better than the sandy ground of the wastes. 

“Hey, baby! Welcome to The Tops casino, I’m gonna need you to hand over your weapons.” The man who abruptly greeted her was older than her (though most were) and had on a black, crumpled suit and bowtie, completing the ridiculous look with pomaded hair in a sort of greaser style. The look would’ve been completely out of place and laughable anywhere else in the Mojave, but here it strangely worked.

She cocked her head to the side, narrowed her whiskey-brown eyes. “Why the hell would I do that?” she snapped, hand hovering protectively over the worn-out pistol tucked into the beaten-up holster on her jeans. Did they really just expect her to hand over her weapons just like that? “Hey listen- they’ll be kept in a protected place, got it? We got safes up in the higher levels of the casino, and we can’t just let any potential drunk off the streets wave a rifle around in here. So, hand em’ over, or get lost.” She could tell the man was struggling to keep his welcoming tone as the welcome wagon for this place, so with reluctance. Running her hand along the dark surface of her buzzcut hair, she handed them over.

Each one the man took under the desk, presumably in a box to be toted to the top floor. “A hunting rifle, one nine millimeter, one ten millimeter, three frag grenades, a switchblade, and one machete. Alright-” Without looking at her, he shifted the box over to his similarly dressed friend who carried it off and away from the lobby desk. “Head right on in, doll!”

The lights were less flashy and eye-catching on the inside than the outside as she walked past the front desk, her eyes darting this way and that to see the roulette tables and the stuffed blackjack games being played, people betting their money away as if nothing mattered. She never personally understood the allure of gambling, she’d lost maybe five caps to a game of slots earlier in the Atomic Wrangler and felt compelled to blow the entire building up with every soul inside.

‘Benny, Benny, Gecko-’ she thought on repeat, looking for the man with the ugly suit and uglier face. As she passed by, dealers and gamblers alike gave her side glances, this dusty and muddy girl looking like an ugly duckling amongst the well-dressed and organized members with their frilly dresses and shiny dress shoes. It didn’t matter, and she didn’t notice. 

Up, at the corner behind a row of slots being played, beside the entrance to what looked like elevators, there he was. Him. With his stupid, ugly-ass coat and round-ass ridiculous fucking baby face. His hazel eyes widened, jaw nearly dropping from what he was looking at. “What in the goddamn…?” Her teeth grinded in her clenched jaws, her breath came out rushed and noisy from her nostrils as she charged on him full speed, like a bull seeing red.


End file.
